Sunday, Easter morning, we left Lille, France and headed north to the Netherlands through Belgium. It only took a couple of hours to drive to Rotterdam, Netherlands. Rotterdam is about an hour south of Amsterdam.
There were 3 things that stuck out to us about Belgium....
1. We saw a lot of bicyclists.
2. We saw a lot of these windmills.
and 3. one large naked cyclops! We drove past this on the motorway in a town not too far inside Belgium......
Our first stop in the Netherlands was just outside of Rotterdam at Kinderdijk. A group of 19 windmills, built around 1740, were built to drain the Alblasserwaard polder. This is the largest concentration of windmills in the Netherlands.
Some of these windmills were museums and others were people's homes.
There were a lot of geese in the Netherlands. This couple had a lot of goslings!
After lunch we drove to Lisse, just southwest of Amsterdam. There we visited Keukenhof, the world's second largest flower garden.
Can you spot Jimmy, Jack, Kate & Luke?
the view from the top of the windmill
I think she wanted her picture next to every flower! I'm not kidding.....
Luke's favorite part of the garden
Happy Easter!
Our "Easter Bunny picture" this year!
In France and the Netherlands (we didn't eat at one in Germany), the McDonald's had Easy Order kiosks. We were able to pick the language we needed and it made ordering so much easier! I did get a good laugh at the McD's in France we stopped at, one of the drink choices was Heineken! Ha!
Monday morning we got up early to go to a flower auction. There wasn't anything posted on their website about it being closed, but when we arrived, it was dead. We decided that with the lack of traffic on the road everyone must have Easter Monday off (Jimmy did as well). So we decided to go ahead and head into Amsterdam.
We skipped Anne Frank's house because the line was really long (and the kids wouldn't have really understood anyways.)
This was actually one of the more tame shops we saw in Amsterdam!
We took a canal ride.
It proved a little too exciting for Jimmy.
The kids and I hung out on this bridge while Jimmy walked down the Red Light District. After he came back, he watched the kids while I took a walk down it. You'll have to ask Jimmy what he was "offered".
If a red light was on above a door, there was a girl in the window.
I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but those houses are not straight up and down from each other.
After awhile, it ceased to blow our minds what we would find while walking around. Luckily if the kids noticed, they didn't ask any questions.
Luke fell asleep on me on the subway ride back to our car. He is absolutely dead weight!
We still had a few hours of sunlight left after leaving Amsterdam. So we headed back towards our hotel via the coast. We came across a small herd of deer along the way.
If there is an ocean nearby, I want to see it and walk its beach. So here is Kate touching the North Sea for the first time.
I have no idea what has triggered it, but Luke becomes terrified when I get close to the water. He is pulling with all of his might to get me away from the water's edge. Needless to say, he didn't touch the ocean. But later on a wave rushed us pretty quickly and his shoes got all wet, so he's "touched" the North Sea too.
Dad and Jack's turn
looking for treasures
There were tulip fields in bloom all over that area. It was really cool to see.
The nice thing about us go go going all day, it doesn't take them very long to fall asleep at night!
Tuesday morning we decided to see if the Aalsmeer Flower Auction was open. The best time to see the action is from 7 am - 9 am so we were up and going pretty early again that morning. And we are glad that we did.
This is the largest flower auction in the world, with 20 million flowers sold daily.
It's hard to tell by this picture but there is controlled chaos going on down below. It appears when the flowers come in, they are separated into like groups and then taken to another area where a worker has "an order" and the flowers are distributed amongst the orders. Jimmy's maternal grandparents worked at Barringer's Blossom Shop YEARS ago in Roswell, NM. Seeing all the flowers reminded him of the times he spent in that tiny Blossom Shop w/ his grandparents and how MUCH different this place was!
picture of the automated tracks that each of the carts would move down.......really reminded Jimmy of the automated product transport system in the fab at Intel in some ways!
We were able to watch a little bit of the bidding process going on.
Luke is pretty good at spotting deer when we see them along the road. So why he couldn't see this large statue, I don't know. (And believe me, his dad was driving the speed limit!) But I took a picture of it for him anyways!
When we were finished at Aalsmeer, we headed east towards Germany.
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